Art Styles of Last 100 Years

Art Styles of Last 100 Years

The turmoil and changes that the world has faced over the last one hundred years has brought about some of the most interesting and intricate art styles ever. Some of the most influential artists have also arisen amongst these styles. Artists such as Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, and Jackson Pollack are the leaders in their arts. Art movements and styles such as abstract expressionism, surrealism, the Cubist Movement, pop art, and international styles in architecture have been influenced by social life, war, reacting to other art forms, and rebelling. I will talk about these art forms in the following paragraphs.

Abstract expressionism does not describe any one particular style, but rather a universal attitude, not all of the work was abstract, nor was it all-expressive. These artists put morally loaded themes onto their canvases. In contrast to the themes of social realism and regional life that characterized American art of previous decades.

The main exponents of the field were Pollock, de Kooning, and Rothko, but other artists included Guston, Kline, Newman and Still. The painters who came to be called “Abstract Expressionists” shared a similarity of outlook rather than of style-an outlook characterized by a spirit of revolt and a belief in freedom of expression.

Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.” The major surrealist painters were Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Andre Masson, Rene Magritte, Yves Tanguy, Salvador Dali, Pierre Roy, Paul Delvaux, and Joan Miro. With its emphasis on content and free form, surrealism provided a change to the existing, highly formalistic Cubist Movement and was largely responsible for bringing about in modern painting the traditional value on content.

The Cubist Movement began as an intellectual revolt against the artistic expression of previous eras. The cubists didn’t use the sensual appeal of paint, texture and color, subject matter with emotional charge or mood; the play of light on for, movement, atmosphere, and the illusionism that proceeded from scientifically based perspective.

The cubists used fragmented and redefined pictures within a shallow plane or within several interlocking and often invisible planes.

The International Style of Architecture has influenced buildings since World War 2. Beginning in Germany in the 20’s, the International Style consists of industrial materials such as glass, steel, and concrete in the form of geometric shapes.